Emperor

As the United States occupies Japan after World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) assigns Gen. Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox) to investigate whether Emperor Hirohito should be prosecuted for war crimes—with a broad hint that he should not. This could have made a good movie, but writers Vera Blasi and David Klass and director Peter Webber largely botch it. The two stars are miscast: The handsome Fox is a poor match for the stolid Fellers, while Jones plays MacArthur the way he played Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln—though his last scene with Hirohito himself (Takatarô Kataoka) has the ring of truth. The movie also gives Fellers a fictional prewar romance with a Japanese woman (Kaori Momoi) and makes his efforts to find her in the ruins of Japan appear more important than the investigation at hand.